J.J. Abrams wants you to know he hates doing commentary tracks. And with that, he kicks off his commentary track for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The director’s moment-by-moment, detailed analysis is, despite his protestations, perhaps the biggest selling point of the four-disc Force Awakens 3D collector’s edition that’s hitting stores on Nov. 15. The set is a marked improvement over the version released last spring, including all the previously released features with several new bells and whistles. ...

The two biggest action heroes in the rebooted Star Wars universe have connected. Daisy Ridley, who became a worldwide star for her fierce portrayal of Rey in The Force Awakens, was in Los Angeles Tuesday promoting the new documentary The Eagle Huntress (which she executive produced and narrates) when Yahoo Movies asked her thoughts about the saga’s upcoming spin-off, Rogue One, starring Felicity Jones. “I’m very excited to see it,” Ridley said before volunteering the following, voice rising in excitement.

It’s rare we have to label our interviews NSFW, but things went blue very quickly when Ben Schwartz stopped by Yahoo for a Facebook Live chat about his new film, The Intervention (watch above). In a nutshell, we asked Schwartz (best known for TV’s Parks and Recreation and House of Lies) how he and co-star Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development) prepared for all the heavy petting they’d have to do in the film. The Intervention, by the way, marks the directorial debut of Clea DuVall (Argo) and follows a group of thirtysomething friends who gather for a weekend away with the secret intention of convincing their miserable married friends (Cobie Smulders and Vincent Piazza) to get divorced.

Just like that the already-daunting task facing Jyn Erso and her ragtag Rebel crew got exponentially more difficult. Darth Vader — Sith Lord, Imperial enforcer, and all around bad dude — is on their case. In the brand new trailer (above) for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, released Thursday night during the Olympics coverage, the man in the mask made his long-anticipated appearance.

Now, a version of that story plays out in Lego form as a new downloadable expansion pack for the Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens video game. To complete the level, called “The Phantom Limb,” players must navigate the droids past the deadly fauna of Taul and contact the Resistance before the whole party is wiped out.

A group of amazingly talented Star Wars devotees have gone next-level with their action figures in a series of photos recreating key moments from The Force Awakens. Prompted by Lucasfilm and Hasbro, hundreds of artists submitted their work via Instagram and Twitter, with two dozen jaw-dropping images ultimately selected for display at Comic-Con. Among those participating was famed toy photographer Johnny Wu (a.k.a.

John Williams may be the greatest film composer of all time, and this viral video shows why. The a cappella group Voctave has recorded a seven-minute medley of Williams’ scores, from Star Wars to Harry Potter. Most recently the composer of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Williams, 84, has been nominated for 50 Academy Awards, more than any other living person.

Adorable astromech stars in the latest character vignette from the Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens video game, debuting here and reminding us how he stole every scene in the most recent installment of the venerable franchise

Star Wars star Carrie Fisher has had a lot of fun over the years describing just how awful her ridiculously revealing slave bikini costume was in 1982′s Return of the Jedi. “If you stood behind me, you could see straight to Florida,” she told Star Wars Insider magazine in 2003. “You’ll have to ask Boba Fett about that.” In a 1999 Newsweek piece, she described the outfit as “what supermodels will eventually wear in the seventh ring of hell” and said, “I wasn’t quite girl-next-door material; I was the girl-next-dogstar, the one in the titanium thong.”

Star Wars: The Force Awakens left so many questions unanswered about what happened between the Ewok’s partying down at the end of Return of the Jedi and Poe Dameron’s mission to Jakku. What happened to the New Republic? How did the remnants of the Empire morph into the First Order? What was Han and Leia’s relationship like? What happened between Ben Solo and Luke Skywalker? While we’re still clueless about the latter question (hey, Episode VIII is only a 18 months away), most of the others are tackled head-on in Bloodline, the new Star Wars novel by Claudia Gray released this week.

It doesn’t get much more 2016 than this. Playing off a popular social media tradition in which people summarize movie plots using only emojis, Disney Interactive Media is now heading into Season 2 of their As Told By Emoji series.

There has been an awakening… and boy is it charming. Disney today unveiled its line of Tsum Tsums based on Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Following up on the popular plushies from the original trilogy and the prequels released earlier this year, the Mouse House will offer nine mini Force Awakens Tsum Tsums (see below) first in Japan on May 4 (a.k.a. May the Fourth) and then stateside beginning June 21.

Who are Rey’s parents? What has Luke Skywalker been up to? What is a Snoke? Of all the big questions left unanswered in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, there’s one that’s bigger than them all: How the heck did C-3PO wind up with a red arm?

Star Wars: The Force Awakens arrives on iTunes and other digital download services today and with it comes the in-depth bonus Secrets of “The Force Awakens”: A Cinematic Journey. There’s the sheer giddiness of newcomers Daisy Ridley and John Boyega and a crew tasked with revisiting George Lucas’s iconic galaxy tempered by the unadulterated neuroticism of director J.J. Abrams (who says he felt “primal terror” going into the first day of shooting). For months before the film’s release, Fisher, 59, was outspoken about the difficulty of returning to her career-defining role as Princess Leia.

Despite what we saw at the climax of Star Wars: The Force Awakens — the beloved rapscallion run through by his son’s lightsaber in a moment that still brings tears to our eyes — Lucasfilm is going to great lengths to reassure fans that Han Solo is immortal. Like that moment at the end of Pulp Fiction when John Travolta triumphantly exits the diner, even though his character was killed in a scene moments earlier, Star Wars’ roguish hero continues to live on in that galaxy far, far away. Written by Star Wars vet Lawrence Kasdan (who’s known for his crackling Han Solo dialogue) and son Jon and helmed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller (The Lego Movie), the anthology movie will be set before the events of A New Hope.

Yes, the guy who can fly anything, Poe Dameron, is back in action. As previously announced, the ace Resistance pilot and one of the young heroes of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (played by Oscar Isaac) is getting an eponymous Marvel comic series beginning next month. Set before the events of the blockbuster film (which arrives on home video in April), Star Wars: Poe Dameron No. 1 finds the X-wing jockey, accompanied by faithful droid BB-8, leading a sqaudron of pilots on a top-secret mission under orders from General Leia Organa.

Your Blu-ray player is about to awaken. During its annual shareholder meeting on Thursday, Disney announced that its money-printing blockbuster sequel Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be released on digital home video on April 1, and on DVD/Blu-ray on April 5. The J.J. Abrams-directed flick — the first Star Wars movie released since Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012 — has earned $2.05 billion at the worldwide box office over the winter, including a record $926 million in the United States.